Ela, Hela, and the Hitch
Two older women set out to try hitchhiking for the first time. Their mundane conversation progressively collapses into a breakdown of communication.
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Two older women set out to try hitchhiking for the first time. Their mundane conversation progressively collapses into a breakdown of communication.
Political dissident and writer Leopold Nettles lives under state surveillance and fears imprisonment, leaving him unable to write. Friends, admirers, a lover, and government agents pressure him to repudiate his work; he ultimately chooses the possibility of prison over denying his authorship.
Recently retired chancellor Vilém Rieger confronts the loss of power amid demands from his family, political functionaries and his own competing notions of truth.
At a science institute campaigning against black magic, Dr. Foustka secretly studies the occult and summons Fistula, a Mephistophelean figure who offers help in exchange for public credit. Foustka tries to use the arrangement for his own advantage while denying it to the institute and Fistula; both sides expose his duplicity, and the institute’s final costume party ends with Foustka engulfed in flames.
Hugo Pludek attends a bureaucratic Liquidation Office garden party after an appointment falls through. He adapts to its empty ideological clichés so successfully that he rises to lead a new committee, losing his identity until even his parents fail to recognize him.
In this metaphysical farce, academic Hummel juggles lovers and philosophy while confronting questions from a strange machine called Pazuk and trying to make sense of his life.
In a black comedy about bureaucracy and conformity, an organization introduces Ptydepe, a constructed language intended to make communication more efficient. The language instead impedes work, and director Josef Gross’s efforts to understand a memorandum in Ptydepe lead him into conflict with his deputy and the organization’s shifting rules.
A comic story based on Havel’s effort to hold a pig roast for his friends. For the stage version, Morávek expanded Havel’s 1987 dialogue with roles for characters previously mentioned in passing and incorporated sections from the Czech work The Bartered Bride.
Two older women set out to try hitchhiking for the first time. Their mundane conversation progressively collapses into a breakdown of communication.
Political dissident and writer Leopold Nettles lives under state surveillance and fears imprisonment, leaving him unable to write. Friends, admirers, a lover, and government agents pressure him to repudiate his work; he ultimately chooses the possibility of prison over denying his authorship.
Recently retired chancellor Vilém Rieger confronts the loss of power amid demands from his family, political functionaries and his own competing notions of truth.
At a science institute campaigning against black magic, Dr. Foustka secretly studies the occult and summons Fistula, a Mephistophelean figure who offers help in exchange for public credit. Foustka tries to use the arrangement for his own advantage while denying it to the institute and Fistula; both sides expose his duplicity, and the institute’s final costume party ends with Foustka engulfed in flames.
Hugo Pludek attends a bureaucratic Liquidation Office garden party after an appointment falls through. He adapts to its empty ideological clichés so successfully that he rises to lead a new committee, losing his identity until even his parents fail to recognize him.
In this metaphysical farce, academic Hummel juggles lovers and philosophy while confronting questions from a strange machine called Pazuk and trying to make sense of his life.
In a black comedy about bureaucracy and conformity, an organization introduces Ptydepe, a constructed language intended to make communication more efficient. The language instead impedes work, and director Josef Gross’s efforts to understand a memorandum in Ptydepe lead him into conflict with his deputy and the organization’s shifting rules.
A comic story based on Havel’s effort to hold a pig roast for his friends. For the stage version, Morávek expanded Havel’s 1987 dialogue with roles for characters previously mentioned in passing and incorporated sections from the Czech work The Bartered Bride.